The Last Dragonslayer: The Chronicles of Kazam, Book 1 by Jasper Fforde

October 2012

In the good old days, magic was indispensable --- but now it’s fading. Fifteen-year-old foundling Jennifer Strange runs Kazam, an employment agency for magicians. It’s hard to stay in business, though, when magic is drying up. If the visions predicting the death of the world’s last dragon at the hands of an unnamed Dragonslayer are true, everything will change for Kazam --- and for Jennifer.

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ZOM-B by Darren Shan

October 2012

When news reports start appearing of a zombie outbreak in Ireland, B's racist father thinks it's a joke --- but even if it isn't, he figures, it's ok to lose a few Irish. B decides it's easier to take out his father's hateful tendencies on his fellow classmates, until zombies attack the school. B is forced on a mad dash through the serpentine corridors of high school, making allegiances with anyone with enough gall to fight off their pursuers.

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Donna Leon, author of The Jewels of Paradise

After nearly three centuries, two locked trunks, believed to contain the papers of a baroque composer, have been discovered. The composer died childless, and now two Venetians each claim inheritance. Caterina Pellegrini’s job is to examine any enclosed papers to discover the “testamentary disposition” of the composer. But when her research takes her in unexpected directions, she begins to wonder just what secrets these trunks may hold.

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Lene Kaaberbol, author of Invisible Murder

In this follow-up to THE BOY IN THE SUITCASE, Danish Red Cross nurse Nina Borg doesn’t realize she is putting life and family on the line when she tries to treat a group of sick Hungarian gypsies who are living illegally in a Copenhagen garage. Nina has unwittingly thrown herself into a deadly nest of the unscrupulous and the desperate, and what is at stake is much more terrifying than anyone had realized.

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Elena Ferrante, author of My Brilliant Friend

Growing up on the tough streets of Naples in the 1950s, friends Elena and Lila learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow, and as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other. They are likewise the embodiments of a nation undergoing momentous change.

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Patricia Cornwell, author of The Bone Bed: A Scarpetta Novel

A woman has vanished while digging a dinosaur bone bed in the remote wilderness of Canada. Somehow, the only evidence has made its way to the inbox of Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta in Boston. As events unfold, Scarpetta begins to suspect that the paleontologist’s disappearance is connected to a series of crimes much closer to home: a gruesome murder, inexplicable tortures, and trace evidence from the last living creatures of the dinosaur age.

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Justin Cronin, author of The Twelve

In the present day: As three strangers attempt to navigate the chaos cast upon civilization by a U.S. government experiment gone wrong, their destinies intertwine. A hundred years in the future: Amy, Peter, Alicia and the others introduced in THE PASSAGE hunt the original 12 virals, unaware that the rules of the game have changed and that one of them will have to sacrifice everything to bring the Twelve down.

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